


The Other Side of Mt. Big C

by Damnpire



Series: Death at the dinner table [1]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Cancer, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Good Parent Owen Strand, Graphic Depictions of cancer treatment, Hurt TK Strand, Leukemia, Lung Cancer, M/M, Medical Trauma, Messed up Chronology, Multi, Overdose, Sad TK Strand, Smoking, Substance Abuse, Underage Substance Use, childhood cancer, constant editing, discussions of child death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29549070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damnpire/pseuds/Damnpire
Summary: The first time Owen Strand experienced the rigors of chemotherapy, he wasn't on the receiving end.(Or, if Owen Strand had two sons instead of one.)
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand, Everest Strand Ryder/Judd Ryder/Grace Ryder, Gwyneth Strand/Owen Strand, Owen Strand & Everest Strand Ryder, Owen Strand & TK Strand, TK Strand & Everest Strand Ryder
Series: Death at the dinner table [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170905
Comments: 17
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Laugh, smile, and have some fun,
> 
> Life's too short to make yours a bad one.

_“Life is for the living._   
_Death is for the dead._   
_Let life be like music._   
_And death a note unsaid.”_

― Langston Hughes

  
The first time Owen Strand experienced the rigors of chemotherapy, he wasn't on the receiving end.

He was holding his sobbing two-year-old son against his belly, as the burning doxorubicin —colloquially called _The Red Devil_ by survivors who were left with crippling heart damage after treatment— dripped into his massive implanted tubing, his pronged Hickman catheter that spiraled down into his tiny pigeon chest and directly into his heart. The chemotherapy had to be infused without touching his veins, as it would have melted them on contact. Which was only marginally better than the methotrexate, the piss-yellow drug injected intrathecally, through the ridges of his spine, to bathe his cerebrospinal fluid in latent toxicity.

Owen could only give thanks for the small mercy that Tyler, eight years old and still young enough to believe that his baby brother was going to get better soon, was downstairs with Gwyn. He wanted to spare them both the sight of what was coming next, for as long as he could.

His baby, his youngest, his unconquerable Everest, was diagnosed with _refractory anemia with excess blasts_ , a recognized myelodysplastic syndrome, when he was only nine months old. That, in laymen's terms, was a form of pre-leukemia, a sign that his tiny body was slowly losing control of its bone marrow, also known as its blood cell factory line. After his diagnosis, their lives became a balancing act. They did everything they could to keep the disease from progressing into full-blown leukemia, which being MDS-derived would harder to treat. Those desperate stop-gap measures culminated in a series of blood transfusions, platelet transfusions, growth factor shots, and immunomodulating drugs for months. 

Unfortunately, they just delayed the inevitable.

No matter how hard they tried to beat back the clock, Ev turned two and woke up gushing blood out of every orifice in his body. 

Hemorrhaging, as it turned out, was a hallmark sign that he had finally developed leukemia. 

_“It’s acute and promyelocytic,”_ Was what Everest's new pediatric hematologist-oncologist told him that morning. _“If his MDS was going to progress, this was the progression we wanted.”_ The young man, still new to the ward, had reached out to squeeze Owen’s shoulder in some modicum of comfort, one designed for someone who wasn't watching his son die. 

_“This is a subtype we can beat, Captain Strand.”_

Sure, maybe, but they weren't the ones who had to beat it. 

No, that responsibility, that _duty,_ fell to his two-year-old, who had been in and out of the hospital for almost all of his waking life. Everest was already missing height and weight milestones, and he was barely at a safe weight for the chemo dosages he was on already.

Was it any wonder that Owen was doubting?

He kissed his son’s cornsilk blond curls, almost as white as snow, and pressed a stuffed black dog into his arms.

The crying finally ebbed off after what felt like hours, and Ev slipped into a fitful and uneasy sleep, his hot little face buried in the wiry synthetic fur of his toy.

For some reason, even after all the hours he'd spent on the ward, and all the months of holding his son down for a thousand painful procedures; for some reason, that sight was what broke him.

He found himself sinking to his knees and folding his hands together tightly. 

“Please God, take this away from him." He released it all in a shaking breath. "Give it to me if you have to, but please...”

Owen was never devout, he ran away from his parents' Catholicism like it was the Black Death, and yet he prayed harder at that moment than he ever had before. 

He was kneeling on the freezing tile, surrounded by the empty bags of life-altering, toxic drugs that couldn’t be exposed to sunlight, all bags with his baby’s name printed on them. That silly, perfect name. He shook his head and buried his face into the edge of his son's cotton sheets.

He and Gwyn had spent the better part of that pregnancy forgetting to pick a name for their second, having already given their two favorites to TK.

Everest got his name from the front of a Life magazine: _Tragedy on Mt. Everest,_ published in August of 1996.

Owen had been reading it in the waiting room the day of Gwyn's twenty-week scan.

 _Oh, baby._ He had thought, _I hope your name is the most dangerous thing about your life._

-X-

Owen Strand was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, two decades after Everest’s battle ended. 

He found himself sitting in that same hard-backed plastic chair, a tissue box placed precariously in front of him and a few personal photographs turned away, as if they were a window into a secret world he wasn’t allowed to see. 

But this time around, there was no squirming little boy in his arms, anxious to get up and play. There were no flyaway blond curls tickling at his nose or a pair of eyes that couldn't decide if they were a light green or a murky blue. There were no tears soaking into his shirt, or a stuffed little black dog missing a right eye. TK, an eight-year-old gangly thing, swimming in his basketball shorts, wasn’t pacing around in the background either. He wasn't whining or looking out the window to the parking lot below. Gwyn wasn’t leaning over the oncologist's desk, asking a million questions that hung in the air between them like half-frozen raindrops on a windshield. She wasn’t holding onto their babies like ballast in a raging storm. She wasn't holding his hand.

Owen was alone, looking at his glowing scans on the light-box and the monster that had taken root in his chest without him noticing. 

“Captain Strand, I know this must seem dire, but rest assured, we caught it early. This is something we can beat.”

That was what they said about Everest’s APL.

“So, we shrink the tumor enough for surgery then?” 

He saw TK in his mind’s eye, only ten years old, and balancing his spindly four-year-old brother in his arms, as they walked down a quiet hospital hallway in the dead of night. Everest was still the size of a toddler, the effect of two years of punishing chemo on his body. But, despite everything, he was still Everest. TK used to call his brother _pumpkin head,_ because of the way his cheeks had swollen up from the steroids. Owen had been so upset the first time he heard it and had to force himself not to blow up at his kid, but Everest just laughed and laughed. He was a pumpkin for Halloween that year, trick or treating down the halls of the oncology floor.

Ev was always so strong, stronger than Owen had ever expected a baby to be, and continued to push forward and enjoy his life, even when the rest of the world seemed to give up on him. He never stopped laughing, singing, and playing, even as things grew dire. Owen still remembered one painful night, when he caught his boys singing offkey to Katy Perry and jumping on Ev's hospital bed, using the remote as a microphone.

Owen couldn't bear to tell them off and joined them instead.

-X-

Owen walked out of that hospital and into the cool night air with his eyes shut, and his mind haunted by memories of a little boy who had traversed that same path a hundred times before. 

It wasn’t the same hospital or the same oncology ward, Owen wouldn’t have been able to handle that, not when all the nurses and doctors had once known him by name. But if he turned his head to the left, at just the right angle, he would have been able to see the shadow of St. Jude’s Research Hospital in the distance, and if he looked behind him, some faraway part of his mind still believed that he would see Everest as he was back then, balancing on his IV stand with a Mets cap pulled low over his eyes.

Owen still knew the smell and the sound of that hospital like the back of his hand, even though he hadn’t been inside in years. 

Every time he passed by, all he could remember was _that_ room, painted with tigers and hanging jungle vines. 

The room where his son had stopped breathing. 

He could still relive that day every time he closed his eyes, and some nights he would still wake up, tangled in his own sheets, and go stumbling into Everest’s room, haunted by that crying little boy. 

_Remembering_ was the easy part, _moving on_ was something else entirely. 

Owen couldn’t bear to watch as his son deteriorated, as the chemo and radiation sapped what little life was left inside of him. He lost weight that he couldn’t afford to lose, his thin frizzy blond curls fell out in a shower of tiny flurries everywhere he went, and eventually, it reached the point where Ev would cry during every moment he was conscious, blood dripping down his chin from the sores that kept bursting open in his mouth. 

When he finally stopped breathing, it was because of an infection in his central line, the tubes for chemo that spiraled out from his heart. 

His desperate lungs were floundering, crippled by the broken body that couldn’t provide them with what they needed to function, so they gave up. His tiny lungs just couldn't take the strain of the next massive infection and nadir sepsis, which his pancytopenia —the decimation of almost all of the blood cells in his body— had caused. It was expected with his high level of chemo, but it was disastrous all the same. 

TK had been laying on the bed with Everest when it happened, both of them on the precipice of sleep. TK was holding Ev's hand, when suddenly his swollen red eyes rolled back into his head and every machine started flashing, beeping, and screaming. 

Owen had jumped into action, his training kicking in, as he swept TK into his arms and the intercom screeched above their heads. 

_"Code Blue-Pedi, Code Blue-Pedi, Room 3342!”_

The room was full in an instant.

Ev was tiny enough to warrant one-handed CPR, and he practically bounced, limp as a doll, as they snapped the bed down and desperately attempted to bring him back. They cut open his fuzzy pajamas and stuck AED patches to his tiny heaving chest, and they forcibly shoved a tube down his throat to bag him. Owen could hear the way his son’s ribs snapped like matchsticks, and he couldn't bear to watch. TK was far less used to such an event, and the sound made him scream out in horror and burst into tears.

Owen, who had made it his lot in life to stare down raging infernos, ran out of that room while Gwyn stayed.

TK was fighting and screaming in his arms the whole way.

He left his baby alone, just as he flatlined. 

Owen would never, _could_ never, forgive himself for that. 

-X-

He thought he was never going to have to see it again, to see his son stop breathing, only inches away from his hands and to be completely useless in the worst moments of his life, and yet here he was. 

He was there as they battered down TK’s door and found his oldest, laying in a puddle of his own vomit, and just as ghostly still as Everest had been. His skin was gray and waxy, spittle drying on his chin.

It was the worst day of Owen's life all over again. 

But he was frozen where he knelt. 

“Cap! Cap, snap out of it! We need the Narcan! _Cap!”_

Someone was starting CPR, but it wasn’t him. It was as if he was staring back in time, staring at Gwyn cradling their toddler covered in blood, kneeling on the floor with her eyes blown wide. “ _Owen! Owen, help me! Please!”_

He eventually took up the prepackaged dose of Narcan in his shaking hands and slammed it into his son’s thigh with a gasp. He was shivering, praying and desperately trying to focus on his boy. He wasn’t going to lose his boy, he couldn’t.

When TK vomited himself into wakefulness, tears slipping out of the corners of his eyes, Owen let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. 

He clutched his son to his chest, shaking and crying as he cradled his baby, his little boy, and wished he was holding them both. 

-X-

When TK was little, Death had a place at the dinner table. 

Death followed him to school every morning, dutifully marching along the crosswalk. 

Death sat next to Everest in his booster seat, sipping a juice-box in the back of their minivan. 

Death was his imaginary friend and foe, he featured in all of TK’s scribbled drawings, holding his hand, and at the same time, he was the monster under his bed. 

Death became a part of his day-to-day existence, and TK stopped being afraid of him. 

Then one day, Death disappeared. 

TK looked for him everywhere.

He looked under the backpacks at school, he looked in the shops and around the food carts on the walk home. He held his Dad’s hand and checked the swings at the park. But Death was nowhere to be found. 

Because Death was curled around a sleeping Ev in his hospital bed, with TK holding his hand on the other side. Evvy been sick for a long time, almost since he was born and Death started coming around right after they found the funny thing growing in his legs. Death waved at TK as his Dad carried him away, when the doctors and nurses found Ev asleep with him.

TK screamed and kicked, but his Dad just wouldn’t let him go. 

-X-

For the longest time, TK thought it was his fault.

That somehow he had done something wrong and his little brother was sick as punishment. 

He knew it was stupid, but he was so young when Ev got sick.

He just didn’t know how to process it. 

In fact, he tried a dozen ways of hiding from it as a child. 

He covered his face with blankets and refused to go into his brother’s bedroom for a month. He pretended Ev was off on a Safari in Africa during hospital stays, or he would eagerly check the mailbox, pretending that he was about to get a postcard that Ev had written from the Eiffel Tower.

It was those little games with himself that helped him get through it, pretending and naively ignoring what was right in front of him. The truth just hurt too much. 

In the end, the only thing that really helped were substances. 

But he wouldn’t find those until he was fourteen, and was terrified of being terrified for the rest of his life. 

He would hear that conversation with his Dad a thousand times, every time his mind slipped away to terrible memories in a too long shower or an absent moment. 

He would remember the anguish in his Dad’s eyes, the way he’d held TK’s hands and made them both shake. 

“TK, I know this is really hard, but I need you to listen to me, okay? Ev is very sick right now, baby.” His Dad had scrubbed at his own face so hard that his eyes welled up. “He’s probably not going to get better, and even if he does... he's not going to be the same. He might not be able to walk, or see, or talk.” 

TK didn't understand and he fell into his Dad's waiting arms.

"But..." He whimpered, his eyes blurred with unshed tears. “But... I love him.”

That should have been enough. 

But it wasn’t, and that hurt in a way that was indescribable. 

His Dad bit his bottom lip so hard that it nearly drew blood. 

"I know, Tyler. I know. I love him too.” His Dad rubbed his back, hushing away the quiet catches in his breath, the preambles to sobs. "But sweetheart, he's so _sick._ The treatments, they kill the cancer, but they hurt him too. They..." His Dad trailed off when he saw the way TK looked up at him, still so small and trusting. He wasn't old enough to understand.

He watched his Dad force a broken smile. 

"You know, they have really good ice-cream down in the cafeteria, I'll grab us some okay? Just wait here, and we'll go down together." His Dad's voice was so thick that it must have been hard to speak around it.

He settled him into a nearby chair, far from Everest’s room and near the elevators with their constant flow of traffic, before he jogged back to check on the situation. 

TK could still hear them though. 

He saw the way his Mom fell into his Dad’s arms, crying her eyes out. "Oh Owen, oh God— they got him back." She wiped her tears on the hem of his black shirt. ”But they had to cut him to, ah..." She waved a hand around her chest area. "...sew a tube, everything shifted because they ventilated him wrong." She sniffled, then coughed into his Dad’s chest, but he didn’t say anything. TK didn’t move either. He just watched, with rapt attention, as a tear slid and dripped down from her nose. "He's still under, the infection put too much strain on his lungs and heart, but he's on antibiotics to fight it. We just need to delay the last round of chemo. His scans look good, Owen." Her voice broke and he watched as his Dad held her close. 

"They're moving him to PICU." He finished for her and she nodded. 

But before he could pull away to see Ev, she stopped him with a hand on his chest.

His Mom was trembling from head to toe, and TK fought the urge to run over and hug her.

“Owen, why are we doing this?" She whispered, almost low enough that TK couldn't hear. Almost. "He's suffering, Owen, and even if he beats this... What kind of life will he have?" 

TK stood up quietly, walking forwards so he could see his baby brother. 

Ev was laying in a bed designed for someone much bigger, even though it was a special child-sized bed. He was missing chunks of his eyebrows, and his white-blond hair was barely there. He had a tube shoved through his broken ribs and another tube taped to the side of his mouth where it tunneled down into obscurity, and there were even more tubes attached to the ones in his chest. He looked cold, and TK felt cold too.

TK started running, he pushed past his Mom and Dad, until he could climb into Ev’s gigantic bed all by himself. Nobody was going to stop him. 

“Everest!” He shouted, trying to sound much more angry and upset than he was. “You have to wake up _now!”_ He said it again and again, even as his Dad rushed over to tear him away. But Ev didn't stir, he didn’t move an inch. “Now! Wake up _now!”_

TK was sobbing like a baby, as his Dad carried him down the stairs and into the hospital cafeteria, as if that was the place they wanted to be. 

He forced TK to sit in a table by the window, even though it was dark outside, and brought over a couple mini-tubs of Ben and Jerry’s. He plopped one down in front of TK, who, despite what he really wanted to do, took a hesitant bite of his favorite flavor and made a face like he was going to be sick. 

His Dad froze. 

“TK, what's wrong? You love Cherry Garcia.” His Dad was so desperate to see him smile. 

But he couldn’t do it. 

“No, I don't." TK finally whimpered, scowling through the tears that burned in his eyes. "I hate cherries, they taste gross." He fisted his hands in the pockets of his pajama pants. 

"Then why...?!" His Dad pinched the bridge of his nose. "Cherry Garcia was the only flavor of ice-cream you wanted last month, buddy. I had to drive around to a bunch of different places just to find it, remember?” 

TK saw red. 

_“Fine then!”_ He dug his spoon into the carton with surprising force and started cramming it in his mouth. He finished the pint in record time and made it a point to get up and throw it away, all while staring at his Dad dead in the eyes. 

He then slumped back in his chair, huffing and rubbing the tears from his eyes. 

"I got it to switch." He finally whispered, when a beat had passed. 

His Dad just quirked an eyebrow, and quietly set his spoon back into his container of Chunky Monkey with a question in his eyes. TK shifted in his seat like he was uncomfortable, tugging at his pajama shirt before begrudgingly admitting that: "Cherry Garcia is Ev's favorite, mine is Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. We always get each other's and switch." TK smiled softly to himself, his dark hair falling in his eyes. "I don't know why we do it, we just do." 

He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. 

“Tyler…” His Dad started with those big, sad eyes. 

"No!" He said, his voice breaking. “Ev is gonna be fine when he gets better because it's him! It doesn't matter if he's sick sometimes, or walks funny, or if he doesn't love me anymore! Because he'll still be Ev, and he’ll dance in his underpants and make me play Candyland a thousand more times. That’s how it has to be.” TK slumped back into his seat with all the conviction of a grieving child. “It has to!”

“Tyler, I need you to look at me, baby.” TK raised his head pitifully, still sniffling. "There is nothing in the world, cancer or no cancer, that could make Everest not love you anymore. That little boy is nuts about you. You're his best friend and his big brother, all wrapped into one. That kid thinks you’re a superhero.” TK let himself smile a little bit. 

"He said that?" He sounded uneasy, almost as if he couldn't believe it.

“Yes!” The huge, booming exclamation was enough for TK to smile bigger than he had in months. 

"I'm going to take care of him, Dad. No matter what."

When Everest finally went into remission, officially NED _(no evidence of disease),_ there was a party on his floor.

A party that was completely decked out in orange and gold streamers, the colors for pediatric cancer and leukemia. The party was so full of guests that some had to stand in the hallways; nurses, doctors, and patients galore, even people from other floors because somehow Ev managed to make friends through the walls. 

They ate overly sweet cake, played games, and drank cherry punch.

Ev was as pale as notebook paper and his mouth was far too covered in sores to eat the cake, but he smiled and laughed right along with them, and shrieked in delight when TK put him on top of his shoulders to ring the _Last Chemo_ bell. 

TK would always remember screaming along with everybody else at the top of his lungs.

_“Pack up your bags, get out the door, you don’t get chemo anymore!”_

-X-

Everest Strand was seventeen years old the first time he stuck a Marlboro Red between his lips. 

He lit the cancer-stick with a fancy silver lighter that he'd nicked from his Dad's desk a few weeks prior. His Dad hadn’t used it in years, probably because he got his kicks from running headlong into danger instead. 

He was sitting on a gross old bench outside St. Jude’s, the place where he was still a frequent flyer, even years upon years after his treatment ended. He was surrounded by a bunch of other hollow-eyed losers: the young guy in a rumpled suit who had probably just been diagnosed with something scary and a bunch of older folks with oxygen tanks or gaping holes in their necks and cigarettes still resting in their tangerine-stained fingers. It was disgusting. Even a few hypocritical doctors were in on the act, eagerly huffing tar into their lungs to keep going. 

It tasted disgusting and smelled even worse. But he finished the cig anyway, tossed the butt on the ground like an asshole, and contemplated what to do next. 

He could go back upstairs and rejoin his family in their veritable wake as they waited for the results of his latest scans. He could toss himself off a bridge, or he could stay right where he was, holding a pack of cigarettes that he'd just bought with the money he got on his last birthday, a few days before. 

Honestly, he shouldn't have been able to buy the damn things at all. It was supposed to be illegal. But apparently when you ran into a convenience store on the ground floor of a kid's hospital as if the devil was riding on your ass, and you look as if you haven't slept in a hundred years; apparently that earns you pity points and no carding. 

He’d warbled some shit about going to buy new colored pencils in the gift-shop when he’d left the room with a jacket over his pajama bottoms. There was gauze bunched up over the needle prick on his elbow and he gasped in a way that means he’d pushed himself too hard by taking the stairs instead of the elevators. 

Everest was about four years old when he realized that he was going to die, probably sooner than everyone else, and what that meant for himself and everyone he loved. 

But what was so scary then, wasn’t so scary now. 

He'd been sick for most of early childhood, one of the multiple facets of his character, of who he was as a person and he hated it. Yet it was nothing new, his unalienable truth, something that everyone in his family had learned to cope with, in their own uniquely fucked up way. 

Everyone had to deal with the fact that it could come back, and that the drugs he'd been on had likely damaged his body forever.

But the worst part was TK, his big brother, who had seen him doubled over in agony with vomit, blood and who knows what else pouring down his face, who saw him with tubes down his throat and shooting out of his neck, who was scarred by simply being in his blast radius. Ev hated himself for it. It really sucked being the reason for your brother's trauma, and the reason he turned to pills and the bottle.

Everest was just so fucking pathetic.

But he also really didn’t give a single shit. 

He knew that smoking was bad for him. Everyone knew that, it was kind of common knowledge by this point. He'd seen all the PSAs on TV, babies in incubators with shriveled up translucent bodies because their mothers had smoked while pregnant, people with stomas, disembodied lungs full of sludge and some that never grew to normal size. 

He could even name and spell several components of the cig balanced in-between his fingers. _Formaldehyde_... carcinogen, embalming fluid. _Arsenic_... poison, carcinogen. _Hexamine_... lighter fluid. _Nicotine,_ obviously. _Toluene_... a chemical used in making paint. It made him want to vomit. 

But at least those feelings meant he was alive.

He contemplated snuffing the cig and going back in, before he was distracted by a little boy in a wheelchair, a massive question-mark scar carved into the side of his little bald head. 

Everest coughed and wheezed like an old man, as the smoke got all choked up in his chest. 

It left him sputtering, his elbows pressed against his knees. 

For an instant, he couldn’t breathe, and he already knew that feeling all too well. 

He stared after that baby boy and saw himself during chemo. 

His broken body, his crying family, and what it had felt like laying flat on his back and strewn out like a broken toy, a plastic mask held over his nose and mouth.

He was always so fucking scared then, whether he showed it or not. 

He wasn’t some happy-go-lucky kid every day of his life. Sure, he liked to pretend that he was, for his father and TK’s sake. But sometimes, he would just breakdown in tears. 

Because it just wasn’t fair. 

Cancer, even when you survived it, never really went away.

A second, oversized jacket settled itself over his shoulders before he could get anymore maudlin, stinking of smoke and the firehouse. 

He instantly wrapped himself up in the damn thing and let his box of cigarettes fall soundlessly into the dirt and dead grass at his feet. He buried his face in it, so that he wouldn’t have to look up.

"I sincerely hope for your sake that those aren't yours, kiddo.” His Dad’s eyes fell to the half-smashed and obviously opened pack of cigarettes between Ev’s feet. 

“Well, Dad," Everest spat, ever the angry teenager. "Who gives a shit?”

The words tastes like ash and air on his tongue, fit to burn him into nothingness where he sat.

“You know I do, Ev.” His Dad sat down heavily, as if he were an old man. Maybe in a way, he was; maybe having a kid like Ev was enough to age you ten years for every two. 

“I’m leaving.”

If his Dad was surprised he didn’t show it. 

He just sighed and looked even older. “Why?”

There were a million reasons why.

But the eyes that his Dad finally looked up to meet were a glacial blue, as cold as the polar ice caps. 

“Because I’m tired of being looked at like I’m broken.” 

_A problem waiting to be fixed._

_A grenade ready to blow._

It was the cold, hard truth, and for the first time in his life, Everest Strand finally realized that he wasn’t any of those things. 

-X-

Dr. Everest Ryder, the youngest and one of the best trauma surgeons in Austin, Texas, turned the corner in his ED and found himself stuck with yet another lost guy. 

He knew the type: open flannel, and faux worn jeans aside, sometimes first responders could be the worst. 

“Sir, the waiting area is straight down that hallway.” He watched the older man’s back stiffen from where he’d been staring at the trauma bay doors, and so pushed forward. “If you have any other questions, I’m sure Carla at the receptionist desk would be able to steer you in the right direction. She also owes me an orange Fanta, so I’ll come with you to bug her.”

When the older man turned to answer, Everest’s smile fell and he dropped his clipboard to the tile with a clatter. 

He didn’t bother to pick it back up, as his arms suddenly became otherwise occupied.

-X-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the comments, kudos, and hits on this fic!
> 
> It's not always going to be the happiest of trips, but I'm glad you're along for the journey. 
> 
> Also please let me know if you feel moved in any way by the words in this story, if you laugh, cry, feel sad, or angry, that's all the highest form of praise. :)

_“There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother…_  
_Oh, how I hated that little boy._  
_And how I love him too.”_

— Anna Quindlen

“What were you thinking?”

Of course that was the first thing Everest asked him, after two hours of pure judging silence. 

“No, honestly, you have to tell me.” Ev insisted, all of seventeen years old and wearing one of TK’s worn-soft _Nirvana_ t-shirts. “Because if you were seriously trying to kill yourself, then we can get you help— real professional help. But if this was just you doing stupid shit again, I’m going to kill you myself.” Ev’s eyes were always the strangest things, they could be as gentle blue as the petals of a cornflower when he was happy, or as tempestuous as the sea when he was upset. But the sickening blue-gray of disappointment was something else entirely.

TK didn’t move or say anything, he just crossed his arms and stared upwards at the cracks in the ceiling, so that he wouldn’t have to look at himself reflected in his baby brother’s eyes. 

The only sound was the sluggish beeping of his heart monitor. 

But of course, Ev wasn't the type to let it go so easily.

“Talk to me, Tyken.” Ev’s voice was strained and his old nickname for TK sounded foreign on his lips. “Please.” 

“I don’t have anything to say to you.” 

They were brothers and as such, had the greatest capability to destroy one another with the slightest touch or misplaced word.

Ev was up on his feet in an instant, “Oh no? Well, why the hell not? You could’ve died, Tyler!” 

The uppity tone of his perfect little brother's voice made TK look over so fast he felt his neck pop, but instead of apologizing or doing anything to resolve the situation, he scoffed. “Shoulda, woulda, coulda.”

It was like throwing kerosene on a bonfire.

He had never seen Ev so angry before, and he half-expected the kid to punch him straight in the mouth. 

Instead, the punch was metaphorical.

“Really?” Ev pressed. “Then what about Dad?” 

The silence between them was deafening.

 _“Don’t you dare.”_ TK growled, trying to pull away, but the restraints on his wrists were pulled taut. So Ev had no trouble leaning forwards and forcing their eyes to meet.

“Who’s gonna stop me? You? Please.” Ev finally looked away, but it was only to straighten the crunchy sheets on TK’s bed and to take his hand. His fingers found themselves resting precariously close to TK's IV, the line currently pumping him up with far more Narcan and fluids than he’d care to admit. 

TK tried to shove him away, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t have the strength. Ever since the day Ev was born, TK had always been bigger and stronger. He was supposed to be the protector, even if he had done a piss-poor job of it.

“Just fuck off, Ev! I don’t need him here to hold my fucking hand, and I certainly don’t need you!” He had to let his words do the work of his weakened body, as he'd really dragged himself to the brink. “Why are you even here, anyway?” The last person he would have called to his bedside after his massive overdose was a fucking passion bearer. 

“I’m listed as your next of kin, genius.” Ev slumped back into his seat. “And Dad’s out on a call.”

“Like always,” TK sighed. 

Ev didn’t say anything to that, he couldn't argue with the truth, and looked out at the black night sky through the window instead. “…I thought you went to rehab.” His voice was small, and for a moment TK was forced to remember that his brother was only seventeen.

“No, you guys drove me there. I didn’t go inside.”

He couldn’t stand the way they’d looked at him, bags packed near his feet and greasy hair, the telltale look of a recent high in his eyes. 

“Tyler.” 

His real name was shame in five letters. 

“I’m the older brother here, Everest. I don’t need you to parent me.” 

Ev sat up higher in his chair, his eyes suddenly so cold that they could have been standing on his namesake. “Oh really? Some older brother! I graduated high school and went to university; you graduated from booze to pills.” It was obvious that he was trying to provoke a real fight, to force some of that natural fire back into TK’s eyes, a burning zest for life. But he couldn’t start a fire when TK had nothing left to burn.

He watched his brother stand up and march to the window, arms crossed, ranting and raving as if he could fix what was broken a long time ago. “The least you could’ve done was tell me you needed help, or at least told me why!”

“Fine." TK was exhausted and sick, he just wanted to be left alone, so he spat out a word that he would regret for the rest of his life, certain that it would make Everest leave.

 _"_ _You.”_

Ev turned, TK could hear the squeak of his high-tops on the linoleum. But he didn’t look up to see the shock and pain, he didn't want to see what his atomic bomb had wrought.

“What?”

“You’re the reason why, and that's why I couldn’t tell you.” TK’s voice was cold and emotionless, and once he'd started talking, it felt like he couldn't stop. But there were a million things he could have said to make it better, to fix it. He could have talked about the endless therapy sessions, how Ev's medical trauma in his formative years had shaped the course of TK's life, the constant fear, anxiety, and a lifetime spent trying to get over his guilt at being the healthy one. He could have told the whole truth and admitted to how scared he was about the cancer coming back, and of all the side effects they’d fought through and the ones yet to come. 

But he said none of those things, and decided that if he broke his little brother’s heart, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much every time he disappointed him.

“I wish you’d just died back then, it would have been so much easier. I could have mourned you and gotten on with my life.” TK's fists were shaking in the restraints. “Maybe Mom and Dad could have grieved for you and found a better place in their hearts together, instead of having to fight to keep you alive for seventeen years. You broke their marriage and stole my fucking childhood!” It felt so good, just to release all of the anger and spite that had been building inside him for so long. “God Ev, don’t you realize we’re all so tired?”

The moment he realized what he'd said, TK felt physically ill.

Everest was a feisty brat, he had to be, in order to get through everything that had happened to him in his first handful of years, and that fighting spirit never really left him. He cried his way through treatment, but when it was done and dusted, then suddenly tears took a backseat, almost as if he’d become too strong for them now. 

So TK hadn’t seen his baby brother truly gobsmacked for years, Ev was always ready with a quip, a joke, or a well-placed barb. 

It was only after a startlingly quiet Ev ran out of the room and down the hall, that he realized his baby brother had been crying, and his stomach sank like a stone. 

Two months of silence and a final set of clear scans later, and his little brother was gone. 

He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t his fault, but what would be the point in lying?

-X-

Everest happily wore many different coats in his life. 

He wore his white coat and scrubs around the ED as he tended to bleeding patients and terrified families, and a blue paper shift in the OR as he put each hour’s Humpty Dumpty back together again. He donned a blazer and slacks when he had to march into Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow’s Catholic Academy for first-grade PTA meetings. He wore nothing at all underneath his soft plaid pajama pants, as he climbed into bed between the two most amazing people in the world, and tugged on a pink robe to serve chocolate chip pancakes to two hungry little gremlins each Saturday morning. 

He did his best to wear each coat with pride: doctor, surgeon, father, and husband. 

But there were a few times over the course of his life and collecting of roles, that a few were lost for the better. 

He was young and stupid once, and it still amazed him everyday what a kind and forgiving person that his wife was. His Amazing Grace, who had accepted him into her life and into her bed, despite all he’d done to make her wish the contrary. But somehow that twisted journey had ended up with the three of them as a healthy and functional poly triad —or as he often referred to them as, a power throuple— and raising two of the most amazing kids on their side of the Rio Grande. It was almost crazy, how a lust-filled mistake could lead to something completely different than he’d ever expected. 

That different was a bowl full of mismatched keys in the entryway of their house, a bouquet of flowers constantly sitting somewhere to beg his wife’s forgiveness after another late shift, worn-down crayons stuck between the cushions of the couch, frantic mornings spent twisting his daughter’s beautiful hair into bantu knots, and late nights spent kissing his husband and wife before he passed out on top of them, often due to exhaustion. 

It was a very good _different,_ and a very good life. 

Then his husband’s entire ladder was wiped out in a single shift. 

Everest was working the ED that night. 

He spent over seventy-three hours straight, attempting to put the men and women who he’d come to see an extension of their family back together again. These were the men and women whose children had slept over at his house countless times. He knew all their nicknames, their birthdays, he went over to their houses for barbecues almost every weekend and was the first person on speed-dial for any minor accident that might need a stitch or two, or a fever that was just on the cusp of being worryingly high. He couldn't even count how many texts he’d received asking about dosages for Children’s Tylenol or what brand of bandaid was the best. Let alone remember the amount of the cookies and baked goods that always found a way onto their doorstep. 

He was forced to look at the mangled bodies of those who had managed to leave the scene breathing, and was both relieved and sick with guilt every time one proved not to be his husband. 

Even the ones who managed to make it out of surgery were dead within hours. 

Treating and triaging burns along with massive explosion trauma was a tricky business, and sometimes no matter how hard you tried to graft skin and repair tissue, it was just too much for a body to take. 

His husband managed to make it out alive... _only_ his husband.

Everest didn’t get to see him for the next two days afterward however, he was far too busy signing death certificates and informing the people he loved about their losses. 

He felt different after that night, the losses would be an earth-shattering thing for anyone to bear, but part of him would always be desensitized to death. When he was a child back on the oncology ward, he would watch children die every day. He would play with another kid for hours in the playroom, then a week or a few months later, that kid would be dead. Eventually, he just got used to it, as horrible as it was to say. That comfort with death was very helpful when he first became a doctor, but tended to be difficult when it came to mourning. He already knew life was finite and would come to an end, death could be sad of course and as a doctor he would do everything he could to avoid it for his patients, but it was a part of life. 

He could hold the hand of a dying six-year-old child and cradle their body as they took in their last rattling breath, and never shed a tear. 

He would be sad of course, but the death was not shocking and didn’t send him reeling, it was natural, a progression until the end. 

He held Grace’s hand as she cried against his chest, when they attended the series of funerals in Judd’s stead. But he was unwavering in his stoic demeanor, and did his best to tend to those around him, taking over when they were unable to speak and comforting them when everything grew too much. 

But his husband was nothing like him, despite the job he had chosen. Oh, he was a cowboy through and through, but he was broken in a way that Everest worried they would never be able to help him fix, even if Judd never wanted to admit to it. 

They helped him to heal his body, but it was his mind and his soul that really needed saving. 

Everest had no idea how to save him, or if that was even possible. 

So the last thing he’d expected or needed was his first failure to show up in the ED, reminding him of everything he’d ever done wrong in his life. 

His clipboard slipped from his hands as he met his daughter’s eyes —those expressive blue eyes, a lighter shade than his own— looking out of place on his father’s face. 

How had he never realized that Flicka had his Dad’s eyes?

He didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. 

Suddenly, his arms were full of his father, and his nose assaulted with the familiar smell of expensive face cream, mint, and sandalwood. His face still fit in the curve of his Dad’s neck as if it was made for him, and his fingers dug into that warm flannel like ballast in a storm. “Ev.” That thick, rumbling baritone was all it took to make him weak in the knees. There was enough emotional subtext packed into that one syllable to fill half of _War and Peace_ , and the feeling was mutual. But it was the odd thickness in his voice and the way his Dad quickly turned his head to cough unproductively into his elbow, that made Ev’s stomach drop.

He hastily tugged the stethoscope from around his neck without a second thought, and moved to gently press the bell to the upper right quadrant of his father’s chest, only for a hand to stop him with the briefest press of fingers. 

His Dad was shaking his eyes, trying to stifle the coughs with a stubborn fist and an unmistakable look in his eyes. 

“Dad,” He let the stethoscope fall and the bell dangle past his hand. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

But he _knew._

He knew that face, and he knew that look. 

He even knew that cough.

A dry, unproductive cough that would become productive with blood, tissue, and mucus as his disease progressed. 

Ev knew it was cancer, but he didn’t know it from the cough alone.

No, he knew it because if it wasn’t cancer, his Dad would have already said something, instead of looking down at his shoes and blinking back tears that weren’t from the force of the coughing. 

_“Dad.”_

Everest grit his teeth and shook his head, a failure once again. 

Suddenly, all the years between them seemed meaningless and inconsequential, and he threw his arms around his father with the strength of a barreling hurricane, nearly knocking them to the floor with the force of it. 

-X-

He would never admit it out loud, but the first person TK Strand had ever loved fiercely and without hesitation, was Everest. 

Ev was the first person to really be _his_ person, his baby brother, his responsibility from the moment his Mom had laid that scrunched nose, red-faced baby, into his arms. Everest was supposed to be his to protect. Ev's life started with TK in it and that was something extraordinary. He had always wanted to give Ev everything he could. 

He had wanted to put his baby brother on his shoulders and spell his name with the stars. 

Then, while TK wasn’t looking, his baby brother got cancer. 

TK was left helpless, useless, holding the end of a rope and waiting until he was strong enough to pull Ev back from the edge. Only, by the time he was, Ev had already crawled out on his own, leaving TK with just enough rope to tie a noose with. 

-X-

The moment his Dad took a huge bite out of the cup of soft serve, the one that Ev had dropped in front of him, he knew it was the end of days. 

His Dad would have never willingly let anything without a meticulous calorie count pass his lips, unless his life was in the process of falling apart. He ate three donuts in six bites after TK’s first overdose and downed an entire Starbucks unicorn frap the first time Ev’s cardiac function tests came back lacking. About three enormous spoonfuls in, Ev reached out and laid his hand on top of his Dad’s, noticing that they were nearly the same size. 

His Dad swallowed thickly around a particularly stubborn bite and lowered the spoon. 

“Have you told TK yet?” Ev swirled his spoon around in the nondescript soup from the hot food line, it was entirely unappetizing. 

“No,” His Dad sounded nonplussed. “And I haven’t told you anything either.”

Ev’s lips quirked upwards into something that could have been a smile. “You didn’t have to, Dad.” He sighed, gently. “Just tell me what type and how far it's spread.”

“Well, it's non-small cell lung cancer,” The words were toxic and it was only through years of training that Ev was able to bite back a muted _fuck_ and to school his features into something serviceable. “I’m not sure what stage yet.” 

Ev choked on the mouthful of sludge he'd tried to ingest. “You’re getting treatment down here?” The cogs in his brain were suddenly turning a mile a minute. “Wait a minute, you left Sloan-Kettering for… what exactly? Texas Oncology’s Austin branch?” His Dad opened his mouth as if to answer, but Everest cut him off, his doctor persona coming in full force. “I mean if you’re willing to travel down to Houston, I went to school with a few specialists at MD Anderson so I might have some pull there, I could probably you get into a clinical trial.” He was mentally scrolling down his rolodex in his head, trying to discern what calls to make that night.

“Ev!” His Dad had his hands up, shaking his head and eyes blown wide. “Slow down, kiddo. Take a breath, I’m not going anywhere.”

Everest had some choice words to say to that, but brutally shoved a big spoonful of soup into his mouth instead, they both knew exactly where his Dad was going to be if he didn’t pick up his big boy pants and start treatment. 

“I’m actually down here for work as well.” His Dad put down his own spoon and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it, yet another rarity. Ev bit down so hard on the plastic spoon in his mouth, that he felt it crack. His Dad was probably going to lose his hair, that little bit of vanity was going to be stolen along with everything else. 

“One of the firehouses down here was pretty much wiped out in an explosion a few months back, and because of my experience after 9/11, I was asked to come down here and rebuild for the community.” 

Ev turned vaguely green and spat out the chunks of his spoon before he could choke on them. 

“You’re here to rebuild the 126?!”

His Dad quirked an eyebrow, “Yes, TK and I. How did you…?”

In lieu of answering, Ev’s eyes flicked down to his right hand where it rested on the table between them. The fluorescent lights made quick work of bouncing off the set of rings on his finger: the thinner band on top being white gold and etched with lines like the branches of a yew tree, and the thicker band at the bottom being tungsten and studded with little rubies around Judd’s badge and number, something he had requested himself. He didn’t realize his Dad’s eyes had followed his own, until familiar fingers were lifting up his hand for a better look. 

“You married a firefighter?” His Dad’s voice was as soft and as fragile as spun glass, as if the wrong word would shatter him into bits. 

“Yeah, his name’s Judd Ryder. He’s actually the lone survivor of the 126.” Everest bit his bottom lip with a little sigh, like he used to do as a kid when he was scared or nervous. “My wife Gracie and I, we’re really worried about him. This is something he can’t cowboy his way out of, no matter how hard he tries.”

“Your wife?” His Dad’s eyes were as huge as the barn owl's who hung around at the ranch at night, barely blinking. 

“Gracie.” He couldn’t help but smile when he said her name. “She and Judd are two of the best things in my life, all three of us are together.” 

“Wow.” His Dad laced their fingers together, but his eyes didn’t move from the rings. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know,” He sighed, running his own free hand through his overgrown white-blond hair. “I guess I just didn’t know what to say to you guys anymore —we were in different orbits, you know? It wasn’t something I ever expected to happen and by the time I knew I was certain about this and _us,_ we had Flicka and that wasn’t something I wanted to shoot a text about or discuss over an awkward phone call. So, I didn’t.” 

Ev felt like a little kid again, explaining to his forever calm and understanding father exactly why he’d punched a kid's lights out on the playground. 

“Flicka?” 

“My daughter.”

His Dad recoiled again, as if Ev had just smacked him clean across the face. The older man let go of his hand and slumped back in his chair, slowly shaking his head. “You have a daughter?” His voice came out only a hair above a whisper. 

“A daughter and a son.” Everest assumed it would be better to just rip off the bandaid now, rather than let his Dad find out from somebody else, or on accident. But regardless, it wasn’t the way he'd wanted to have the conversation, and his voice oozed nothing but pure guilt. “Flicka is almost six and Oakley is two.”

His Dad didn’t say anything for a little while after that, swirling his melted ice-cream in its plastic cup and staring down into the contents, as if they held all the answers to the universe. 

“I’m so sorry, son.”

Ev’s eyes were up in an instant. “Wait, what?”

“You didn't want me to meet them... I must have been a worse father than I thought.” Those usually warm and inviting eyes were lowered and downcast, and he was certain that if his Dad looked up, his gaze would be full of heartbreak. 

“No, Dad.” Ev shook his head so hard he made himself dizzy, instantly reaching out. “No, it’s not like that. I just... didn’t want to make things with TK even harder. I knew if I told you, you'd tell him."

His Dad winced, “Oh God, Ev, please tell me you don't mean that.” 

“Can you really blame me though?” Ev’s eyes had turned steely, and his tone indignant. “The last time I saw TK, he wasn’t going anywhere good, okay? He was still stuck at the bottom of a bottle and popping pills for the hell of it.” His Dad wouldn’t meet his eyes, and that there was proof enough. “Look, I love Tyken more than anything, but I still don’t want his broken-down ass anywhere near my kids.”

“Everest, that isn’t fair.” His Dad’s voice was tired but scathing, doing anything to defend his favorite son. 

“I’m not you, Dad. I can’t give him a million chances.” Everest wasn't backing down, not when it concerned the welfare of his kids. “Not even if it’s my fault."

“What?” His Dad was incredulous. “You… what?”

“Forget it.” He pushed back his chair with an annoying squeal. 

Then, after a pregnant pause between them.

“Can you honestly look at me, and tell me he’s been clean for years?”

His Dad didn't say anything for a long time, until finally: “He _was.”_

Ev picked up on the past tense with the knowing nature of a man who had seen his brother overdose more times than he cared to count. He shook his head with a sad, rueful smile. “I knew it.”

“Ev…” The pain was evident in his father’s soft voice, and his eyes were plaintive. 

“I love you, Dad, and I want to help you through this.” Ev's voice hitched, but he powered through, “But until you can prove to me he’s changed, I can’t have him around my kids.”

Then, much like the majority of their lives together, Ev slung his bag over his shoulder and walked away. 

-X-

  
Judd Ryder hated seeing the people he loved upset.

But it was even worse when it was Everest —his boy who was made of gunpowder and lead, and would only cry when things were dire— so Judd was as shocked as could be, and woefully lacking at the task, as his younger lover sobbed hysterically into his chest. Grace tried her best to wrap her arms around Ev, to hold and soothe him through his punishing waves of guilt and grief, but even that was barely enough to stop the emotional earthquake that was tearing their boy apart. 

One particularly loud and deep sob, so deep that it sounded painful, led to Everest pressing his hands to his nose and mouth, trying to stifle his cries. 

“No, sweetheart,” Grace chastised him, gently, the pain of seeing him so upset was clear in her voice. “Don’t do that now. It's alright, baby.”

He gasped something about waking the kids, and a few sick, tearful mentions of his father and brother.

Judd only grunted, shifting to hold him closer. “It’s alright, baby." He echoed his wife. "We’ve got you now.”

That was enough for Ev's tenuous dam to break again, and they held him tight until the first dregs of morning light peaked over the horizon. 

It wasn't the first time Judd Ryder hated Owen and TK Strand with everything he had in him, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

-X-

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to all the real Everests, Owens, and TKs of the world.


End file.
